Rosa Luxemburg - The National Question (Chap3)

23/12/13
Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)
3. Federation, Centralization, and

Particularism
We must turn next to another proposed form of the solution of the nationality question, i.e.,
federation. Federalism has long been the favorite idea of revolutionaries of anarchic hue.
During the 1848 revolution Bakunin wrote in his manifesto: The revolution proclaimed by
its own power the dissolution of despotic states, the dissolution of the Prussian state ...
Austria ... Turkey ... the dissolution of the last stronghold of the despots, the Russian state
... and as a final goal a universal federation of European Republics. From then on,
federation has remained an ideal settlement of any nationality difficulties in the programs
of socialist parties of a more or less utopian, petit bourgeois character; that is, parties
which do not, like Social Democracy, take a historical approach but which traffic in
subjective ideals. Such, for example, is the party of Social Revolutionaries in Russia.
Such was the PPS in its transitional phase, when it had ceased to demand the creation of a
national state and was on the way to abandoning any philosophical approach. Such, finally,
are a number of socialist groups in the Russian Empire, with which we will become
acquainted more closely at the end of the present chapter.
If we ask why the slogan of federation enjoys such wide popularity among all
revolutionaries of anarchistic coloring, the answer is not difficult to find: Federation
combines at least in the revolutionary imagination of these socialists independence
and equality of nations with fraternity. Consequently, there is already a certain
concession from the standpoint of the law of nations and the nation-state in favor of hard
reality, it is a sui generis, ideological, taking into account the circumstance, which cannot
be overlooked that nations cannot live in the vacuum of their rights as separate and
perfectly self-sufficient nation-states, but that there exist between them some links.
Historically developed connections between various nationalities, the material
development which welded whole areas, irrespective of national differences, the
centralization of bourgeois development all this is reflected in the heads of those
revolutionary improvisers; in place of brute force they place voluntarism in relations
https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1909/national-question/ch03.htm
1/22
23/12/13
between nations. And since republicanism is self-evident in this because the very same
will of the people which restores independence and equality to all nations obviously has
so much good taste as to throw simultaneously with contempt to the dump of history all
remnants of monarchism, consequently the existing bourgeois world is transformed at one
stroke into a voluntary union of independent republics, i.e., federation. Here we have a
sample of the same revolutionary historical caricature of reality by means of which the
appetite of Tsarist Russia for the southern Slays was transformed, in Bakunins
phraseology, into the pan-Slavic ideal of anarchism, a federation of Slavic Peoples. On a
smaller scale, an application of this method of revolutionary alterations of reality was
the program of the PPS adopted at its Eighth Congress in 1906: a republican federation of
Poland with Russia. As long as the social-patriotic standpoint in the pre-revolutionary
period was maintained in all its purity and consistency, the PPS recognized only the
program of nation-states, and rejected with contempt and hatred the idea of federation
offered, for instance, by the Russian Social Revolutionaries. When the outbreak of
revolution all at once demolished its presuppositions, and the PPS saw itself forced to
follow the road of concessions in favor of reality which could no longer be denied, in view
of the obvious fact that Poland and Russia form one social entity, a manifestation of which
was precisely the common revolution, the program of federation of Poland with Russia,
previously held in contempt, became the form of that concession. At the same time, the
PPS, as is usual with revolutionaries of this type, did not notice the following fact: when
Social Democracy took for the historical basis of its program and tactics the joint
capitalistic development of Poland and Russia, it merely stated an objective, historical
fact, not depending on the will of the socialists. From this fact, the revolutionary
conclusion should have been drawn in the form of a united class struggle of the Polish and
Russian proletariat. The PPS, however, putting forward the program of federation of
Poland with Russia, went much further: in place of the passive recognition of historical
fate, it itself actively proposed a union of Poland with Russia and assumed responsibility
for the union, and in lieu of the objective historical development, it placed the subjective
consent of socialists in revolutionary form.
But federalism as a form of political organization has, like the nation-state itself, its
definite historical content, quite different from, and independent of, the subjective ideology
attached to that form. Therefore, the idea of federation can be evaluated from the class
standpoint of the proletariat only when we examine the fate and role of that idea in modern
socialist development.
2/22
23/12/13
An outstanding tendency of capitalistic development in all countries is indisputably an

internal, economic, and capitalist centralization, i.e., an endeavor to concentrate and weld
into one entity the state territory from the economic, legislative, administrative, judicial,
military, etc. viewpoints. In the Middle Ages, when feudalism prevailed, the link between
the parts and regions of one and the same state was extremely loose. Thus, each major city
with its environs, itself produced the majority of objects of daily use to satisfy its needs; it
also had its own legislation, its own government, its army; the bigger and wealthier cities
in the West often waged wars on their own and concluded treaties with foreign powers. In
the same way, bigger communities lived their own closed and isolated life, and each area
of land of a feudal lord or even each area of knightly estates constituted in itself a small,
almost independent state. The conditions of the time were characterized by a diminution
and loosening of all state norms. Each town, each village, each region had different laws,
different taxes: one and the same state was filled with legal and customs barriers
separating one fragment of a state from another. This decentralization was a specific
feature of the natural economy and the nascent artisan production of the time.
Within the framework of the pulverization of public life, connected with the natural
economy, and of the weak cohesion between the parts of the state organism, territories and
whole countries passed incessantly from hand to hand in Central and Western Europe
throughout the Middle Ages. We note also the patching together of states by way of
purchase, exchange, pawnings, inheritance, and marriage; the classical example is the
Hapsburg monarchy.
The revolution in production and trade relations at the close of the Middle Ages, the
increase of goods production and moneyed economy, together with the development of
international trade and the simultaneous revolution in the military system, the decline of
knighthood and the rise of standing armies, all these were factors that, in political relations,
brought about the increase of monarchical power and the rise of absolutism. The main
tendency of absolutism was the creation of a centralized state apparatus. The sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries are a period of incessant struggle of the centralist tendency of
absolutism against the remnants of feudalist particularism. Absolutism developed in two
directions: absorbing the functions and attributes of the diets and provincial assemblies as
well as of the self-governing munici palities, and standardizing administration in the whole
area of the state by creating new central authorities in the administration and the judiciary,
as well as a civil, penal, and commercial code. In the seventeenth century, centralism
3/22
23/12/13
triumphed fully in Europe in the form of so-called enlightened despotism, which soon
passed into unenlightened, police-bureaucratic despotism.
As a result of the historical circumstance that absolutism was the first and principal
promoter of modern state centralism, a superficial tendency developed to identify
centralism in general with absolutism, i.e., with reaction. In reality, absolutism, insofar as,
at the close of the Middle Ages, it combated feudal dispersion and particularism, was
undoubtedly a manifestation of historical progress. This was perfectly well understood by
Staszic, who pointed out that the [Polish] gentry commonwealth could not survive in the
midst of autocracies. On the other hand, absolutism itself played only the role of a stirrup
drink [parting good wishes] with regard to the modern bourgeois society for which,
politically and socially, it paved the way by toppling feudalism and founding a modern,
uniform, great state on its ruins. Indeed, independent of absolutism, and after its historical
demise, bourgeois society continued to carry through with undiminished force and
consistency the centralist tendency. The present centralism of France as a political area is
the work of the Great Revolution. The very name, Great Revolution, exerted, everywhere
its influence reached in Europe, a centralizing influence. Such a product of the
Revolutions centralism was the Rpublique Helvtique, in which, in 1798, suddenly the
previously loosely confederated Swiss cantons were compressed. The first spontaneous
action of the March [1848] revolution in Germany was the destruction by the popular
masses of the so-called customs houses [Mauthuser], the symbols of medieval
particularism.
Capitalism, with its large-scale machine production, whose vital principle is
concentration, swept away and continues to sweep away completely any survivals of
medieval economic, political, and legal discrimination. Big industry needs markets and
freedom of untrammeled trade in big areas. Industry and trade, geared to big areas, require
uniform administration, uniform arrangement of roads and communications, uniform
legislation and judiciary, as far as possible in the entire international market, but above all
in the whole area inside each respective state. The abolition of the customs, and tax
autonomy of the separate municipalities and gentry holdings, as well as of their autonomy
in administering courts and law, were the first achievements of the modern bourgeoisie.
Together with this went the creation of one big state machinery that would combine all
functions: the administration in the hands of one central government; legislation in the
hands of a legislative body the parliament; the armed forces in the form of one
4/22
23/12/13
centralized army subject to a central government; customs arrangements in the form of one
tariff encompassing the entire state externally; a uniform currency in the whole state, etc. In
accordance with this, the modern state also introduced in the area of spiritual life, as far as
possible, a uniformity in education and schools, ecclesiastical conditions, etc., organized
on the same principles in the entire state. In a word, as comprehensive a centralization as
possible in all areas of social life is a prominent trend of capitalism. As capitalism
develops, centralization increasingly pierces all obstacles and leads to a series of uniform
institutions, not only within each major state, but in the entire capitalistic world, by means
of international legislation. Postal and telegraphic services as well as railway
communication have been for decades the object of international conventions.
This centralist tendency of capitalistic development is one of the main bases of the future
socialist system, because through the highest concentration of production and exchange, the
ground is prepared for a socialized economy conducted on a world-wide scale according
to a uniform plan. On the other hand, only through consolidating and centralizing both the
state power and the working class as a militant force does it eventually become possible
for the proletariat to grasp the state power in order to introduce the dictatorship of the
proletariat, a socialist revolution.
Consequently, the proper political framework in which the modern class struggle of the
proletariat operates and can conquer is the big capitalistic state. Usually, in the socialist
ranks, especially of the utopian trend, attention is paid only to the economic aspect of
capitalistic development, and its categories industry, exploitation, the proletariat,
depressions are regarded as indispensable prerequisites for socialism. In the political
sphere, usually only democratic state institutions, parliamentarianism, and various
freedoms are regarded as indispensable conditions of this movement. However, it is
often overlooked that the modern big state is also an indispensable prerequisite for the
development of the modern class struggle and a guarantee of the victory of socialism. The
historical mission of the proletariat is not socialism applicable on every inch of ground
separately, not dictatorship, but world revolution, whose point of departure is big-state
development.
Therefore, the modern socialist movement, legitimate child of capitalist development,
possesses the same eminently centralist characteristic as the bourgeois society and state.
Consequently, Social Democracy is, in all countries, a determined opponent of
5/22
23/12/13
particularism as well as of federalism. In Germany, Bavarian or Prussian particularism,

i.e., a tendency to preserve Bavarias or Prussias political distinctiveness, their
independence from the Reich in one respect or another, is always a screen for gentry or
petit bourgeois reaction. German Social Democracy also combats, with full energies, the
efforts, for instance, of South German particularists to preserve a separate railroad policy
in Bavaria, Baden, Wrttemberg; it also energetically combats particularism in the
conquered provinces of Alsace-Lorraine, where the petite bourgeoisie tries to separate
itself, by its French nationalism, from political and spiritual community with the entire
German Reich. Social Democracy in Germany is also a decided opponent of those
survivals of the federal relationship among the German states inside the Reich which have
still been preserved. The general trend of capitalist development tends not only toward the
political union of the separate provinces within each state, but also toward the abolition of
any state federations and the welding of loose state combinations into homogeneous,
uniform states; or, wherever this is impossible, to their complete break-up.
An expression of this is the modern history of the Swiss Confederacy, as well as of the
American Union; of the German Reich, as well as of Austria-Hungary.
The first centralist constitution of the integrated republic of Switzerland, created by the
great revolution, was obliterated without a trace by the time of the Restoration, and
reaction, which triumphed in Switzerland under the protection of the Holy Alliance,
quickly returned to the independence of the cantons, to particularism and only a loose
confederation. Domestically, this implementation of the ideal of voluntary union of
independent groups and state units in the spirit of anarchists and other worshipers of
federation. involved the adoption of an aristocratic constitution (with the exclusion of the
broad working masses) as well as the rule of Catholic clericalism.
A new opposition trend, toward the democratization and the centralization of the Swiss
federation, was born in the period of revolutionary seething between the July [1830] and
March [1848] revolutions, which was manifested in Switzerland in the form of a tendency
to create a close state union in place of federation, and to abolish the political rule of noble
families and of the Catholic clergy. Here, centralism and democracy initially went hand in
hand, and encountered the opposition of the reaction which fought under the slogan of
federation and particularism.
6/22
23/12/13
The first constitution of the present Swiss Confederation of 1848 was born out of a bitter
struggle against the so-called Sonderbund, i.e., a federation of seven Catholic cantons
which, in 1847, undertook a revolt against the general confederation in the name of saving
the independence of the cantons and their old aristocratic system, and clericalism. Although
the rebels proudly waved the banner of freedom and independence of the cantons against
the despotism of the Confederacy, in particular of freedom of conscience against
Protestant intolerance (the ostensible cause of the conflict was the closing of the convents
by the Democratic Radical parties), democratic and revolutionary Europe, undeceived by
this, applauded wholeheartedly when the Confederacy, by brutal armed force, i.e., by
violence, forced the advocates of federalism to bow and surrender to the Confederate
authority. And when Freiligrath, the bard of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, triumphantly
celebrated the victory of the bayonets of Swiss centralism as a reveille to the March
revolution In the highlands the first shot was fired, in the highlands against the parsons
it was the absolutist government of Germany, the pillar of Metternichs reaction, that took
up the cause of the federalists and the defenders of the old independence of the cantons.
The later development of Switzerland up until the present has been marked by constant,
progressive, legal and political centralization under the impact of the growth of big
industry and international trade, railroads, and European militarism. Already the second
Constitution of 1874 extended considerably the attributes of the central legislation, the
central government authority, and particularly of a centralized judiciary in comparison with
the Constitution of 1848. Since the Constitution was thoroughly revised in 1874,
centralization has progressed continuously by the addition of ever new individual articles,
enlarging the competence of the central institutions of the Confederacy. While the actual
political life of Switzerland, with its development toward a modern capitalist state, is
increasingly concentrated in the federal institutions, the autonomous life of the canton
declines and becomes increasingly sterile. Matters have gone even further. When the
federal organs of legislation and uniform government, originating from direct elections by
the people (the so-called Nazionalrat and the so-called Bundesrat), assume increasingly
more prestige and power, the organ of the federal representation, i.e., of the cantons (the
so-called Stnderat), becomes more and more a survival, a form without content,
condemned by the development of life to slow death.[1] At the same time, this process of
centralization is supplemented by another parallel process of making the cantonal
constitutions uniform by means of constant revisions in the legislatures of the respective
cantons and the mutual imitation and borrowing among them. As a result, the former variety
of cantonal particularisms rapidly disappears. Until now, the main safeguard of this
7/22
23/12/13
political separateness and independence of the cantons was their local civil and penal law
which preserved the entire medley of its historical origin, tradition, and cantonal
particularism. At present, even this stubbornly defended fortress of the cantons
independence has had to yield under the pressure of Switzerlands capitalist development
industry, trade, railroads and telegraphs, international relations which passed like a
leveling wave over the legal conditions of the cantons. As a result, the project of one
common civil and penal code for the entire confederation has been already elaborated,
while portions of the civil code have already been approved and implemented. These
parallel currents of centralization and standardization, working from above and below and
mutually supplementing each other, encounter, almost at every step, the opposition of the
socially and economically most backward, most petit bourgeois French and Italian cantons.
In a significant manner, the opposition of the Swiss decentralists and federalists even
assumes the forms and colors of a nationality struggle for the French Swiss: the expansion
of the power of the Confederacy at the expense of cantonal particularism is tantamount to
the increase of the preponderance of the German element, and as such they, the French
Swiss, openly combat it. No less characteristic is another circumstance, viz., the same
French cantons which, in the name of federation and independence, combat state
centralism, have internally the least developed communal self-government, while the most
democratic self-governing institutions, a true rule of the people, prevail in those communes
of the German cantons which advocate centralization of the Confederation. In this way,
both at the very bottom and at the top of state institutions, both in the latest results of the
development of present-day Switzerland and at its point of departure, centralism goes hand
in hand with democracy and progress, while federalism and particularism are linked with
reaction and backwardness.
In another form the same phenomena are repeated in the history of the United States of
America.
The first nucleus of the Union of the English colonies in North America, which until then
had been independent, which differed greatly from one another socially and politically, and
which in many respects had divergent interests, was also created by revolution. The
revolution was the advocate and creator of the process of political centralization which has
never stopped up to the present day. Also, here, as in Switzerland, the initial, most
immature form of development, was the same voluntary federation which, according to
the conscious and unconscious adherents of anarchistic ideas, stands at the apex of modern
8/22
23/12/13
social development as the crowning summit of democracy.

In the first Constitution of the United States, elaborated in the period 1777-1781, there
triumphed completely the freedom and independence of the several colonies, their
complete right of self-determination. The union was loose and voluntary to such an extent
that it practically did not possess any central executive and made possible, almost on the
morrow of its establishment, a fratricidal customs war among its free and equal
members, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and Maryland, while in Massachusetts, under
the blessing of complete independence and self-determination, a civil war, an uprising
of debt-encumbered farmers broke out, which aroused in the wealthy bourgeoisie of the
states a vivid yearning for a strong central authority. This bourgeoisie was forcibly
reminded that in a bourgeois society the most beautiful national independence has real
substance and value only when it serves the independent utilization of the fruits of
internal order, i.e., the undisturbed rule of private property and exploitation.
The second Constitution of 1787 already created, in place of federation, a unified state
with a central legislative authority and a central executive. However, centralism had still,
for a long time, to combat the separatist tendencies of the states righters which finally
erupted in the form of an open revolt of the Southern states, the famous 1861 war of
secession Here we also see a striking repetition of the 1847 Swiss situation. As advocates
of centralism, the Northern states acted representing the modern, big-capital development,
machine industry, personal freedom and equality before the law, the true corollaries of the
system of hired labor, bourgeois democracy, and bourgeois progress. On the other hand,
the banner of separatism, federation, and particularism, the banner of each hamlets
independence and right of self-determination was raised by the plantation owners of
the South, who represented the primitive exploitation of slave labor. In Switzerland as in
America, centralism struggled against the separatist tendencies of federalism by means of
armed force and physical coercion, to the unanimous acclaim of all progressive and
democratic elements of Europe. It is significant that the last manifestation of slavery in
modern society tried to save itself, as reaction always does, under the banner of
particularism, and the abolition of slavery was the obverse of the victory of centralist
capitalism. After the victorious war against the secessionists, the Constitution of the
American Union underwent a new revision in the direction of centralism; the remainder
was, from then on, achieved by big capital, big power, imperialist development: railroads,
world trade, trusts, finally, in recent times, customs protectionism, imperialist wars, the
9/22
23/12/13
colonial system, and the resulting re-organization of the military, of taxation, and so on. At
present, the central executive in the person of the President of the Union possesses more
extensive power, and the administration and judiciary are more centralized than in the
majority of the monarchies of Western Europe. While in Switzerland the gradual expansion
of the central functions at the expense of federalism takes place by means of amendments to
the constitution, in America this takes place in a way of its own without any constitutional
changes, through a liberal interpretation of the constitution by the judicial authorities.
The history of modern Austria presents a picture of incessant struggle between a centralist
and federalist trend. The starting point of this history, the 1848 revolution, shows the
following division of roles: the advocates of centralism are the German liberals and
democrats, the then leaders of the revolution, while the obstruction under the banner of
federalism is represented by the Slavic counter-revolutionary parties: the Galician
nobility; the Czech, Moravian and Dalmatian diets; the pan-Slavists and, the admirers of
Bakunin, that prophet and phrasemaker of the anarchist autonomy of free peoples. Marx
characterized the policy and role of the Czech federalists in the 1848 revolution as
follows:
The Czech and Croat pan-Slavists worked, some deliberately and some unknowingly, in
accordance with the clear interests of Russia. They betrayed the cause of revolution for the
shadow of a nationality which, in the best case, would have shared the fate of the Polish
one. The Czech, Moravian, Dalmatian, and a part of the Polish delegates (the aristocracy)
conducted a systematic struggle against the German element. The Germans and a part of the
Poles (the impoverished gentry) were the main adherents of revolutionary progress;
fighting against them, the mass of the Slavic delegates was not content to demonstrate in
this way the reactionary tendencies of their entire movement, but even debased itself by
scheming and plotting with the very same Austrian government which had dispersed their
Prague congress. They received a well-deserved reward for their disgraceful behavior.
They had supported the government during the October uprising, the outcome of which
finally assured a majority to the Slavs. This now almost exclusively Slavic assembly was
dispersed by the Austrian soldiery exactly as the Prague congress had been and the panSlavists were threatened with imprisonment if they dared to complain. They achieved only
this: that the Slavic nationality is now everywhere threatened by Austrian centralism.[2]
Marx wrote this in 1852 during the revival of absolutist rule in Austria after the final
10/22
23/12/13
collapse of the revolution and of the first era of constitutionalism a result which they
owe to their own fanaticism and blindness.
Such was the first appearance of federalism in the modern history of Austria.
In no state did the socio-historical content of the federalist program and the fallacy of the
anarchist fantasies concerning the democratic or even revolutionary character of that slogan
appear so emphatically also in later times, and, so to speak, symbolically, as in Austria.
The progress of political centralization can be directly measured here by the program of
the right to vote for the Vienna parliament, which, passing successively through four phases
of gradual democratization, was increasingly becoming the main cement binding together
the state structure of the Hapsburg monarchy. The October Patent of 1860, which
inaugurated the second constitutional era in Austria, had created in the spirit of federalism
a weak central legislative organ, and given the right of electing the delegations to it not to
the people, but to the diets of the respective crownlands. However, already in 1873, it
proved indispensable for breaking the opposition of the Slavic federalists, to introduce
voting rights not by the diets, but by the people themselves, to the Central Parliament
[Reichsrat] although it was a class, unequal, and indirect voting system. Subsequently,
the nationality struggle and the decentralist opposition of the Czechs, which threatened the
very existence and integrity of the Hapsburg monarchy, forced, in 1896, the replacement of
their class voting right by a universal one, through the addition of a fifth curia (the socalled universal election curia). Recently we witnessed the final reform of the electoral
law in Austria in the direction of universal and equal voting rights as the only means of
consolidating the state and breaking the centrifugal tendencies of the Slavic federalists.
Especially characteristic in this respect is the role of Galicia. Already from the first
session of the Viennese Reichsrat and the Galician Diet in April 1861, the Galician
nobility came forward as an extreme opposition against the liberal cabinet of Schmerling,
violently opposing the liberal reforms in the name of national autonomy and the right of
nations to self-determination, i.e., in the name of the autonomous rights of the Provincial
Diet.
Soon the policy became crystallized in the Stanczyk program of the so-called Cracow
party, the party of such men as Tarnowski, Popiel, Wodzicki, and Kozmian, and found its
expression in the notorious resolution of the Galician Diet of September 28, 1868, which
is a kind of Magna Carta of the separation of Galicia. The resolution demanded such a
11/22
23/12/13
broadening of the competence of the Provincial Diet that for the Central Parliament there
remained only the most important all-monarchy matters; it completely abolished the central
administration, handing it over exclusively to the crown land authorities, and in the end
completely separating also the crown land judiciary. The state connection of Galicia with
Austria was reduced here to such a flimsy shadow that sanguine minds, who did not yet
know the flexibility of Polish nationalism, would be ready to see in this ideal program of
federalism, almost national independence or at least a bold striving toward it. However,
to prevent any such illusions, the Stanczyk party had announced its political credo and
begun its public career in Austria not with the above program of federation but with the
notorious address of the Diet of December 10, 1866, in which it proclaimed its classical
formula: Without fear of deserting the national idea and with faith in the mission of
Austria we declare from the bottom of our hearts that we stand and wish to stand by Your
Majesty. This was only a concise aphoristic formulation of the sanguinary crusade which
the nobility party around Przeglad Polski (Polish Review) waged, after the January
uprising, against the insurrection and the insurgents against the conspiracy, illusions,
criminal attempts, foreign revolutionary influences, the excesses of social anarchy,
liquidating with cynical haste the last period of our national movements under the slogan of
organic work and public renunciation of any solidarity with Russian-dominated Poland.
Federalism and political separatism were not in reality an expression of national
aspirations but were, rather, their simple negation and their public renunciation. The other
harmonious complement of the Stanczyk program of federation (read: separation) was
opposition and obstruction in coalition with Czech and Moravian federalists and the
German clerical-reactionary party against any liberal reforms in Austria: against the liberal
communal law, against the liberal law concerning elementary schools, against the
introduction of the law concerning direct elections by the people to the Central Parliament;
on the other hand it supported the government in all reactionary projects, e.g., support of
the military laws starting with Taaffes Law, etc. This development has been coupled with
extreme reaction also in provincial policies, the most glaring expression of which is the
adamant opposition against the reform of elections to the Provincial Diet.
Finally, the third component of Galician federalism is the policy of the Polish nobility
toward the Ruthenians. Quite analogous to the French federalists of Switzerland, the
Galician advocates of a potential decentralization of the Austrian state have been strict
centralists internally in relation to the Ruthenian population. The Galician nobility has from
the beginning stubbornly combated the demand of autonomy for the Ruthenians, the
12/22
23/12/13
administrative division of Galicia into Eastern and Western, and the granting of equal
status to the Ruthenian language and script along with the Polish language. The program of
separation and federalism suffered a decisive defeat in Austria as early as 1873, when
direct elections to the Central Parliament were introduced, and from then on the Stanczyk
party, in keeping with its opportunistic principles, abandoned the policy of obstruction and
acquiesced in Austrian centralism. However, Galician federalism from then on appears on
the stage if not as a program of realistic politics then as a means of parliamentary
maneuvers each time that serious democratic reforms are considered. The last memorable
appearance of the program of separating Galicia in the public arena is connected with
the struggle of the Galician nobility against the most recent electoral reform, against the
introduction of universal and equal voting rights for the Vienna Parliament. And as if to put
stronger emphasis on the reactionary content of the federalist program, the deputies of
Austrian Social Democracy, in April 1906, voted unanimously against the motion
concerning the separation of Galicia. At their head in his character as representative of the
Austrian Workers Party, a representative of the all-monarchy proletarian policy spoke and
voted against the separation of Galicia: this was Mr. Ignacy Daszynski, who, as a leader in
the three parts of the patriotic PPS, considers the separation of the Kingdom of Poland from
Russia as his political program. The Austrian Social Democracy is a determined and open
advocate of centralism, a conscious adherent of the state consolidation of Austria and
consequently a conscious opponent of any separatist tendencies.
The future of the Austrian state says Kautsky depends on the strength and influence of
Social Democracy. Precisely because it is revolutionary, it is in this case a party upholding
the state [eine staatserltaltende Partei] in this sense; although this sounds strange, one may
apply to the Red revolutionary Social Democracy the words which half a century ago
Grillparzer addressed to the hero of the Red Yellow reaction, General Radetzky: In your
camp is Austria. [In deinen Lager ist Osterreich][3] is just as in the matter of the
separation of Galicia Austrian Social Democracy decisively rejects the program of the
Czech Federalists, that is, the separation of Bohemia. Kautsky writes:
The growth of the idea of autonomy for Bohemia is only a partial Manifestation of the
general growth of reaction in all big states of the Continent. The program of autonomy
would not yet make Bohemia an autonomous state. It would still remain a part of Austria.
The Central Parliament would not be abolished by this. The most important matters
(military affairs, customs, etc.) would remain in its competence. However, the separation
13/22
23/12/13
of Bohemia would break the power of the Central Parliament, which today is very weak. It
would break it not only in relation to the diets of the several nations but also in relation to
the central government, on the model of the delegations. [The reference here is to
delegations of Austria and Hungary which were elected by the Vienna and Budapest
parliament and had as their task the arrangement of the so-called Austro-Hungarian
compromise, that is, the mutual relationship or proportion contributed by both countries for
the common expenses of the state and the settlement of certain matters affecting both.] The
state council, that is, the Central Parliament of Austria, would have to be reduced to a
miserable idol nodding its head to everything. The power of the central government in
military and customs affairs, as well as foreign policy, would then become unrestricted.
The separation of Bohemia would signify the strengthening of the rule of bourgeois peasant
clericalism in the Alpine lands of the nobility and in Galicia; also that of the capitalist
magnates in Bohemia. As long as these three strata must exercise their authority in the
Central Parliament jointly, they cannot develop all their power because their interests are
not identical; holding them together is no easy matter. Their strength will be increased if
each of these strata can concentrate on a certain defined area. The clericals in Innsbruck
and Linz, the Galician nobility in Cracow and Lemberg, the Bohemian Tories in Prague are
more powerful separately than all together in Vienna. Just as in Germany, the reaction
draws its strength from the particularism and weakness of the Central Parliament; here, just
as there, giving ones moral support to particularism means working in favor of reaction.
Here, just as there, we are obligated to resist strongly the present current tending to the
weakening of the Central Parliament. [Kautsky ends with these words:] We must combat
Bohemian states rights [the program of separating off Bohemia] as a product of reaction
and a means of its support. We must combat it since it means splitting the proletariat of
Austria. The road from capitalism to socialism does not lead through feudalism. The
program of separating off Bohemia is just as little a preliminary to the autonomy of peoples
as anti-Semitism (that is, a unilateral struggle against Jewish capital) is a preliminary to
Social Democracy.[4]
Where the remnants of feudalism have been preserved to this day in Europe, they are
everywhere a protection of monarchy. In Germany, a striking manifestation of this is the
fact that the unity of the Reich is based on a universal equal voting right to Parliament,
while all German states taken individually have much more reactionary state constitutions,
from Prussia, with its (as Bismarck expressed it) most monstrous tri-class electoral law,
up to Mecklenburg, which is still in general a medieval state with a purely class
14/22
23/12/13
constitution.
The city of Hamburg itself is an even more striking example if we believe that progress and
democracy are connected with centralism, and reaction with particularism and federalism.
The city of Hamburg, which forms three electoral districts of the German Reich, is
represented in Parliament on the basis of a universal voting right, exclusively by social
Democratic deputies. On the basis of the Constitution of the Reich as a whole, the
Workers Party is, therefore, in Hamburg, the unique ruling party. But the very same city of
Hamburg, as a separate little state, on the basis of its distinction, separateness, introduced
for itself a new electoral law even more reactionary than the one in force until now, which
makes it almost impossible to elect Social Democrats to the Hamburg Diet.
In Austria-Hungary we see the same. On the one hand, a federal relationship between
Hungary and Austria is an expression not of freedom and progress but of monarchical
reaction because it is known that the Austro-Hungarian dualism is maintained only by the
dynastic interest of the Hapsburgs, and Austrian Social Democracy clearly declared itself
in favor of the complete dissolution of that federation and the complete separation of
Hungary from Austria.
However, this position resulted by no means from the inclinations of Austrian Social
Democracy for decentralization in general, but just the reverse: it resulted from the fact that
a federal connection between Hungary and Austria is an obstacle to an even greater
political centralization inside Austria for the purpose of restoring and consolidating the
latter, and here the very same Social Democratic Party is an advocate of as close a union
of the crownlands as possible, and an opponent of any tendencies to the separation of
Galicia, Bohemia, Trieste, the Trentino, and so on. In fact, the only center of political and
democratic progress in Austria is her central policy, a Central Parliament in Vienna which,
in its development, reached a universal equal-voting right, while the autonomous Diets
Galician, Lower Austrian, Bohemian are strongholds of the most savage reaction on the
part of the nobility or bourgeoisie.
Finally, the last event in the history of federal relationships, the separation of Norway from
Sweden, taken up in its time eagerly by the Polish social-patriotic parties (see the Cracow
Naprzod [Forward]) as a joyous manifestation of strength and the progressiveness of
separatist tendencies, soon changed into a new striking proof that federalism and state
15/22
23/12/13
separations resulting from it are by no means an expression of progress or democracy.

After the so-called Norwegian revolutions, which consisted in the dethronement and the
expulsion from Norway of the King of Sweden, the Norwegians quietly elected another
king for themselves, having even formally, in a popular ballot, rejected the project of
introducing a republic. That which superficial admirers of all national movements and all
semblances of independence proclaimed as a revolution was a simple manifestation of
peasant and bourgeois particularism, a desire to possess for their own money a king of
their own instead of one imposed by the Swedish aristocracy, and, therefore, a movement
which had nothing in common whatever with a revolutionary spirit. At the same time, the
history of the disintegration of the Swedish-Norwegian union again proved how far, even
here, the federation had been an expression of purely dynastic interests, that is, a form of
monarchism and reaction.
The idea of federalism as a solution of the nationality question, and in general, an ideal
of the political system in international relations, raised sixty years ago by Bakunin and
other anarchists, finds at present refuge with a number of socialist groups in Russia. A
striking illustration of that idea, as well as of its relation to the class struggle of the
proletariat at the present time, is given by the congress of those federalist groups of all
Russia held during the recent [1905] revolution and whose deliberations have been
published in a detailed report. [See the Proceedings of the Russian National Socialist
Parties, April 16-20, 1907, Knigoi Izdatielstvo, Sejm (St. Petersburg: 1908).]
First of all, a characterization of the political complexion and of the socialism of these
groups is interesting. In the Congress, there participated Georgian, Armenian, ByeloRussian, Jewish, Polish, and Russian federalists. The Georgian Socialist Federalist Party
operates mainly according to its own report not among the urban population but in the
countryside, because only there does there exist in a compact mass the national Georgian
element; these number about 1.2 million and are concentrated in the gubernias of Tiflis,
Kutai, and partially, Batum. This party is almost completely recruited from peasants and
petty gentry. In its striving for an independent regulation of its life declares the
delegate of the Georgian Socialist Federalist Party without counting on the centralist
bureaucracy, whether this be absolutistic or constitutional or even social-democratic (!),
the Georgian peasantry will probably find sympathy and help on the part of that petty
Georgian gentry which lives on the land and by the size of its possessions and also its way
of life differs little from the peasantry. Therefore, the party considers that even
16/22
23/12/13
independently of considerations of a basic (!) nature, merely the practical conditions of

Georgian agriculture demand the treatment of the agrarian question as a class question,
peasant or gentry only as an over-all national question, as a social (!) problem, as a
problem of work(!). Starting with these assumptions, the Georgian Federalists, in harmony
with the Russian Social Revolutionaries, strive for the socialization of land which is to be
achieved under the rule of the capitalistic or bourgeois system. A beautiful addition to this
program is the reservation that socialization cannot be extended to orchards, vineyards
and other special cultivations, or to farms, because these are areas demanding a certain
contribution of work and material means which cannot be returned in one year or in several
years and which would be difficult for a Georgian peasant to renounce. Consequently,
there remains private property for cultivations and socialism for grain-planting - of
which there is little in the Caucasus as well as for dunes, marginal lands, bogs, and
forests.
The main thing on which the Socialist Federalists put emphasis is the reservation that the
agricultural question in Georgia should be decided not in a constituent assembly nor in a
central parliament, but only in autonomous national institutions, because however life will
decide this question, in principle, only this is unquestionable, that the land in a Georgian
territory should belong first of all to the Georgian people. The question, how it happens
that the socialist party is joined, en masse, by the petty gentry and bourgeoisie, the
delegates of the Georgian Federalists explained by saying that this happens only because
there is no other party which would formulate the demands of these strata.
The Armenian Revolutionary Federation, that is, Dashnaktsutyun, founded at the beginning
of the 1890s for the purpose of liberating the Armenians from Turkey, was exclusively
concerned with militarizing the people, i.e., the preparation of fighting detachments and
armed expeditions into Turkey, the import of weapons, the direction of attacks on Turkish
troops, etc. Only recently, at the beginning of the current century, the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation expanded its activity into the Caucasus and assumed at the same
time a social aspect. The cause for the revolutionary outburst of the movement and the
terroristic action in the Caucasus was the confiscation of the estates of the Armenian clergy
for the [tsarist] treasury in 1903. Besides its main combat action, the party began, against
the background of those events, a propaganda among the rural population in the Caucasus
as well as a struggle against tsardom. The agrarian program of Dashnaktsutyun demands the
expropriation of gentry estates without compensation, and surrendering there to the
17/22
23/12/13
communes for equal distribution. This reform is to be based on the still rather general
communal property in the central part of the Transcaucasus. Recently, there arose a
young trend among the Armenian Federalists maintaining that the Dashnaktsutyun party is
simply a bourgeois, nationalistic organization of a rather doubtful socialistic aspect an
organization linking within itself completely heterogeneous social elements, and in its
activity and action on completely heterogeneous socio-political territory, such as Turkey
on the one side and the Caucasus on the other. This party recognizes, according to its own
report, the principle of federalism both as a basis of nation-wide relations and the basis on
which should be thoroughly reconstructed the conditions in the Caucasus, and finally, as an
organizing principle for the party.
A Byelorussian organization was formed in 1903 under the name of the Byelorussian
Revolutionary Hromada. Its cardinal programmatic demand was separation from Russia,
and in the sphere of economics, the nationalization of the land. In 1906, this program
underwent a revision and from then on the party has been demanding a federal republic in
Russia, with territorial autonomy for Lithuania and a diet in Vilna, as well as a nonterritorial national cultural autonomy for the remaining nationalities inhabiting Lithuania,
while on the agrarian question the following demands were adopted: lands held by the
treasury, by the church, and by the monasteries, as well as big landed property above
eighty to one hundred dessiatins are to be confiscated and turned into a land fund out of
which, first of all, the landless and small peasants should be supplied on the basis of
hereditary property, with the aim of eliminating pauperism as well as developing the
productive forces of the country. The socialization of land cannot yet be mentioned because
of the low intellectual level of the Byelorussian peasant. Thus, the task of the party is the
creation and maintenance of a peasant farm in a normal size of eight dessiatins, as well as
the consolidation of lands. Furthermore, forests, bodies of water, and bogs are to be
nationalized. Hronmada carries on its activity among the Byelorussian peasants who
inhabit, to the number of about seven millions, the gubernias of Vilna, Minsk, Grodno, and
part of Witebsk.
The Jewish Federalist group, Sierp [The Sickle], organized only a few years ago by
Jewish dissidents from the Russian Social Revolutionary Party, demands non-territorial
autonomy for all nationalities in the Russian state; out of them would be created voluntary
state political associations combining together into a state federation, in order to strive in
that way for its ultimate goal, territorial (!) autonomy for the Jews. It directs its activity
18/22
23/12/13
mainly to the organizing of Jewish workers in Witebsk, Ekaterinoslav, Kiev, etc., and it
expects the implementation of its program to arise from the victory of the socialist parties
in the Russian state.
It is superfluous to characterize the remaining two organizations, the PPS revolutionary
faction, and the Russian Party of Social Revolutionaries, since they are sufficiently known
by origin and character.
Thus appears that Diet of Federalists cultivating at present that antiquated idea of
federation rejected by the class movement of the proletariat. It is a collection of only petit
bourgeois parties for whom the nationalist program is the main concern and the socialist
program an addition; it is a collection of parties mainly representing with the exception
of the revolutionary fraction of the Polish Socialist Party and the Jewish Federalists the
chaotic aspirations of a peasantry in opposition, and the respective class proletarian
parties that came into being with the revolutionary storm, in clear opposition to the
bourgeois parties. In this collection of petit bourgeois elements, the party of the Russian
terrorists is a trend, not only the oldest one, but also the one furthest left. The others
manifest, much more clearly, that they have in common with the class struggle of the
proletariat.
The only common ground which links this variegated collection of nationalists has been the
idea of federation, which all of them recognize as a basis of state and political, as well as
party, relations. However, out of this strange harmony, antagonism arises immediately from
all sides the moment the question turns to practical projects of realizing that common ideal.
The Jewish Federalists bitterly complain of the haughtiness of the nations endowed by
fate with a territory of their own, particularly the egoism of the Polish Social Patriots,
who presented the greatest opposition to the project of non-territorial autonomy; at the very
same time, these Jewish nationalists questioned in a melancholy way whether the Georgian
Federalists would admit any other nationality to their territory, which they claimed as the
exclusive possession of the Georgian nationality. The Russian Federalists, on the other
hand, accuse the Jewish ones, saying that, from the standpoint of their exceptional situation,
they want to impose on all nationalities a non-territorial autonomy. The Caucasian,
Armenian, and Georgian Federalists cannot agree concerning the relationship of the
nationalities in a future federal system, specifically on the question of whether other
nationalities are to participate in the Georgian territorial autonomy, or whether such
19/22
23/12/13
counties as Akhalkalak, inhabited mainly by Armenians, or Barchabin, with a mixture of

population, will form individual autonomous territories, or will create an autonomy for
themselves according to the composition of their population. The Armenian Federalists,
on their part, demand the exclusion of the city of Tiflis from the autonomous Georgian
territory, inasmuch as it is a center primarily inhabited by Armenians. On the other hand,
all the Georgian and Armenian Federalists recognize that at present, since the TatarArmenian slaughter, the Tatars must be excluded from the federation of autonomous
Caucasian peoples as a nationality immature from the cultural point of view! Thus, the
conglomeration of nationalists agreeing unanimously to the idea of federation changes into
as many contradictory interests and tendencies; and the ideal of federalism, which
constitutes in the theoretical and super-historical abstraction of anarchism, the most perfect
solution of all nationality difficulties, on the first attempt at its implementation appears as a
source of new contradictions and antagonisms. Here it is strikingly proved that the idea of
federalism allegedly reconciling all nationalities is only an empty phrase, and that, among
the various national groups, just because they dont stand on a historical basis, there is no
essentially unifying idea which would create a common ground for the settlement of
contradictory interests.
But the same federalism separated from the historical background demonstrates its absolute
weakness and helplessness not only in view of the nationality antagonisms in practice but
also in view of the nationality question in general. The Russian Congress had as its main
theme an evaluation and elucidation of the nationality question and undertook it unrestricted
by any dogmas or formulae of the narrow doctrine of Marxism. What elucidation did it
give to one of the most burning questions of present political life? Over the whole history
of mankind before the appearance of socialism proclaimed the representative of the
Social Revolutionary Party in his speech at the opening of the Congress one may place
as a motto the following words from the Holy Scripture: And they ordered him to say
shibboleth and he said sibboleth and they massacred him at the ford of the river.
Indeed, the greatest amount of blood spilled in international struggle was spilled because
of the fact that one nation pronounced shibboleth and the other sibboleth. After this
profound introduction from the philosophy of history, there followed a series of speeches
maintained at the same level, and the debates about the nationality questions culminated in
the memorandum of the Georgian Federalists which proclaimed:
in primitive times, when the main task of people was hunting wild animals as well as
20/22
23/12/13
creatures like themselves there were neither masters nor slaves. Equality in social
relations was not violated; but later, when people came to know the cultivation of the soil,
rather than killing and eating their captives they began to keep them in captivity. What,
therefore, was the reason out of which slavery arose? Obviously not only material interests
as such, but also this circumstance: that man was by his physical nature a hunter and a
warrior(!). And despite the fact that man has already long since become an industrial
animal, he is to this very day a predator, capable of tearing apart his neighbor for minor
material considerations. This is the source of unending wars and the domination of classes.
Naturally the origin of class domination was influenced also by other causes, for instance,
mans ability to become accustomed to dependence. But undoubtedly if man were not a
warrior, there would be no slavery.
There follows a bloody picture of the fate of the nationalities subject to tsardom and then
again a theoretical elucidation:
Somebody may tell us that bureaucratic rule rages not only in the borderlands but in
Russia itself. From our point of view this is completely understandable. A nation
subjugating other nations eventually falls into slavery itself. For instance, the more Rome
expanded its domination, the more the plebeians were losing their freedom. Another
example: during the great French Revolution the military victories of the Republican Army
annihilated the fruit of the revolution the Republic (!). The Russians themselves enjoyed
incomparably greater freedom before they united in one powerful state, that is, at the time
of the rule of die separate princes. Thus, the memorandum ends its historio-philosophical
lecture; freedom does not agree with the clatter of arms. Conquest was the main cause
which brought into being both slavery as well as the rule of some social classes over
others.
That is all that the Federalists of the present time are able to say about the nationality
question. It is literally the same phraseology from the standpoint of justice, fraternity,
morality and similar beautiful things which already, sixty years ago, was proclaimed by
Bakunin. And just as the father of anarchism was blind to the Revolution of 1848, its inner
springs, its historical tasks, the present last of the Mohicans of federalism in Russia stand
helpless and powerless before the revolution in the tsarist system.
The idea of federation, by its nature and historical substance reactionary, is today a
21/22
23/12/13
pseudo-revolutionary sign of petit bourgeois nationalism, which constitutes a reaction

against the united revolutionary class struggle of the proletariat in the entire Empire.
[1] Characteristic is the antipathy, general among the Swiss population, against the
Stnderat as a do-nothing institution. This is only a subjective expression of the fact that
this organ of federalism has been deprived of its functions by the objective course of
historical development. Original note by R.L.
[2] Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, Revolution and Konterrevolution in Deutschland
(Weimar: 1949), pp.77, 78-79.
[3] Die Neue Zeit, 1897-1898, Vol.1, p.564.
[4] Die Neue Zeit, 1898-1899, pp.293, 296, 297, 301.
Next Chapter: Centralization and Autonomy [1]
Rosa Luxemburg Archive [2]

Last updated on: 11.12.2008
1. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1909/national-question/ch04.htm
2. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/index.htm
22/22

Rosa Luxemburg - The National Question (Chap3)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Rosa Luxemburg - The National Question (Chap3)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

23/12/13

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

3. Federation, Centralization, and

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

An outstanding tendency of capitalistic development in all countries is indisputably an

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

particularism as well as of federalism. In Germany, Bavarian or Prussian particularism,

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

social development as the crowning summit of democracy.

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

separations resulting from it are by no means an expression of progress or democracy.

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

independently of considerations of a basic (!) nature, merely the practical conditions of

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

counties as Akhalkalak, inhabited mainly by Armenians, or Barchabin, with a mixture of

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

Rosa Luxemburg: The National Question (Chap.3)

pseudo-revolutionary sign of petit bourgeois nationalism, which constitutes a reaction

Rosa Luxemburg Archive [2]

You might also like